Angie Estes

Lieu de Mémoire: Family Home

It is impossible, Ruskin says,
as impossible as to raise
the dead, to restore anything
that has ever been great or beautiful
in architecture, but Leonardo tried
to capture with anatomical
accuracy the muscles, skin, and bones
because he believed that by learning to draw
the grieving face, one can know
sorrow. I’ve heard that you can flatten
a paper drinking straw to create
a beating reed, place it
into an ancient Greek instrument
called the aulos, sometimes found
in archaeological excavations,
and play the opening notes
of Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel.”
At first, we didn’t have a car
so didn’t need a garage, but later
when we could afford one, we built
a garage as large as the house
and kept it very clean and
empty like the nest
we took down, filled
with perfect hollow, streamers
of dried milkweed loosening
the air, then found the next day
on the now bare, flat shelf
of the eave, one egg,
robin’s-egg blue.